Square Enix Teases Final Fantasy VII Remake Again

Square Enix just released Final Fantasy XIII and the company is on the cusp of releasing XIV, the upcoming MMO, but people still want to see a Final Fantasy VII remake. Square knows this very well, so every couple of weeks they get one of their higher-ups to mention a remake during an interview, but continually maintain that re-doing FFVII would take a long time.

Just take this recent quote from SE Producer Yoshinori Kitase at a FFXII launch event in Korea:

“To make FFXIII at this level of quality, it took us 3 to 4 years. If we were to make FFVII in the same style of FFXIII, it would take 10 times as long, so it would be difficult to take it up immediately. However, we always keep in mind how often this is requested.”

I think that this might be the most requested remake in the history of videogames, based on how many times Square Enix has said that they are exploring the option. What do you guys think? Will this actually happen, and do you even want it? What would you like to see out of an FFVII remake anyways? Just a thought: if Final Fantasy XIII showed up on the 360, would an FFVII remake do the same?

3 thoughts on “Square Enix Teases Final Fantasy VII Remake Again”

I’m with Julez on this one. I don’t know why people keep clamoring for this game to be remade.

Even if Square Enix were to remake it, they would likely change a ton of the gameplay mechanics and probably change the story around quite a bit. Then, instead of people shouting for a remake, we’d have the same people complaining that “they messed it up.”

Besides, part of what made FFVII so successful when it was released in 1997 was the state of console rpgs in the early 32 bit era. The design of FFVII was so far beyond its contemporaries (games like Suikoden and Blood Omen, both of which looked like slightly upgraded SNES games) that it was impossible to not be impressed. For a lot of kids, it was their first experience with a console rpg, so it holds a special place in their memory 13 years later that helps to mask the game’s deficiencies. What’s going to help it stand out from the pack now? It doesn’t do anything that a host of games (even some FF games) haven’t done better in the time since its release. I’m not trying to say that it’s overrated; I don’t think it is and I regard it as a very important and influential game historically. But we’ve already played it and by the time they make enough changes to it to make it worth replaying, it won’t really be FFVII anymore.

So either way, it’s a lose-lose scenario for Square Enix. Hopefully they learned their lesson about trying to cash in on FFVII fandom when Dirge of Cerebus and Crisis Core hit the shelves with a dull thud.

By the way, I realize that Capcom successfully remade Resident Evil and made a lot of changes that didn’t alter the game, but I don’t think you can do that with FFVII. It’s not just upgrading the graphics; you would have to change the story to make it worth playing through again and the combat system would have to be completely retooled to stand up against what we’ve seen from current and even last gen rpgs.

All the people who want a remake so bad should just watch Advent Children without the subtitles and substitute dialogue from the original game. Let Square Enix devote resources to important things; I, for one, would like to see FFXV before the next generation of consoles comes out.